Steven Svoboda presenting to the United Nations the first document centrally addressing
male circumcision as a human rights violation. Geneva, August 9, 2001.

Peter Adler presenting to the Massachusetts State Congress during
a hearing on banning routine infant circumcision (2004)

ARC is committed to safeguarding all children's rights to bodily integrity - male, female and intersex

Genital Autonomy

Compelling reasons exist for strong concern among attorneys and the public about the various types of damage caused by circumcision. These include pain and suffering, psychological harm, behavioral changes, irreversible reduction or loss of full sexual function, and underreported tragic complications, including deaths. Moreover, no satisfactory medical justification for routine circumcision has ever been demonstrated. Click here to view the Attorneys for the Rights of the Child brochure.

We are pleased to announce publication of the 31st issue of the ARC Newsletter, our Fall-Winter 2014 issue. This 40-page issue, produced with the expert collaboration of Newsletter Editor Jonathan Friedman, is stuffed with features we are proud to present.

"Parents need to recognize that they're effectively removing that decision from their son," says Dr. Douglas Diekema, a bioethicist at Seattle Children's Hospital who served on the pediatricians' task force. "And there are some men who will grow up being unhappy with the decision that their parents made."

Steven Svoboda was selected as Intact America's Intactivist of the Month for November, 2014. Seven years ago, when Intact America was just an idea among a handful of intactivists, J. Steven Svoboda—a human rights and patent law attorney in San Francisco—was an integral part of the conversation. In fact, he’s been fighting for human rights for decades.

We are pleased to announce publication of the 31st issue of the ARC Newsletter, our Spring-Summer 2014 issue (Volume 10, Issue 3). This 58-page issue, was produced with the expert collaboration of Newsletter Editor Jonathan Friedman.

"Ethical and Legal Issues in Pediatrics," The Twentieth Pitts Lectureship in Medical Ethics at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, was held on October 18-19, 2013. Steven Svoboda debated AAP Circumcision Task Force member Dr. Michael Brady, M.D., in a talk entitled, "Newborn Male Circumcision is Unethical and Should be Illegal."

Steven Svoboda's letter to the editor of JAMA Pediatrics was published in their March 2014 issue. Svoboda's letter is a critique of Morris & Tobian's article, "Legal Threat to Male Infant Circumcision," appearing in the same journal.

Genital Autonomy organized the two-day conference titled, "Promoting Children's Rights in Europe: Recent Developments" and held at the University of Keele in England on September 16 and 17, 2013. Steven's presentation–which will be available for publication in the coming months–analyzed the 2012 Cologne court case holding that male circumcision violates human rights and the law and the German legislation attempting to overturn that court case.

In Search of Fatherhood magazine is again featuring Steven Svoboda on the cover of their magazine, their latest Autumn 2013 issue, along with two other activists on other issues. The issue reprints the fourth and final installment of Svoboda's article, "The Limits of the Law: Comparative Analysis of Legal and Extralegal Methods to Control Child Body Mutilation Practices."

Global Discourse has published Steven's article, "Promoting Genital Autonomy by Exploring Commonalities between Male, Female, Intersex, and Cosmetic Female Genital Cutting," adapted from the paper I presented on September 1, 2011 at the conference held at the University of Keele, "Law, Human Rights, and Non-Therapeutic Interventions on Children."

Springer has published the proceedings of the 2010 Berkeley symposium, the eighth and last such book. It is titled Genital Cutting: Protecting Children from Medical, Cultural, and Religious Infringements and is edited by George C. Denniston, Frederick M. Hodges, and Marilyn F. Milos.

The Journal of Medical Ethics has published Steven Svoboda's article, "Circumcision of Male Infants as a Human Rights Violation." This is part of the special issue on circumcision that also includes an article by Bob Van Howe and Steven Svobodaabout the AAP's position statement and technical report that drew a response from the AAP.

Attorneys for the Rights of the Child wrote to the Canadian Paedatric Society, urging the CPS to uphold children's rights to bodily integrity and genital autonomy in its policy statement on male circumcision, which is expected to appear within the next few months.

Oxford University's Practical Ethics Blog has issued an announcement by the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) providing further information on the contents of the upcoming special issue on male circumcision.

Summary: Human rights attorney J. Steven Svoboda and pediatrician Robert S. Van Howe, M.D. have published a new article in one of the world&rsquo;s leading journals on medical ethics arguing that the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP's) position regarding male circumcision lacks credible support. The article leads off the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) and has already led the AAP to arrange for the JME to publish its response in what Svoboda and Van Howe consider an ill-fated attempt to justify the medically and ethically flawed arguments in its policy statement and technical report.

Germany's official Paediatric Association, the Berufsverband der Kinder- und Jugendärtze (BVKJ), has broken its silence on infant circumcision – scoring two major points for genital integrity. The BVKJ prominently cites Attorneys for the Rights of the Child and our e-letter to Pediatrics criticizing the AAP Technical Report and Policy Statement.

The long awaited circumcision policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) may be most notable for what it does not address. The statement steadfastly omits any analysis of the foreskin, its erogenous, protective, and immunological functions, or crucially, the impact its removal has on normal sexual functioning and on the health and quality of life.

Our work has borne very satisfying fruit over the past year. As opposition continues and even expands in certain areas, ARC and our fellow intactivists are making unprecedented inroads in safeguarding genital integrity, achieving goals of which we could only have dreamt in past years.

ARC at the UN

Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. Report of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights on its fifty-third session—written statement submitted by the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), a non-governmental organization on the Roster—male circumcision

The intactivist movement was represented for the first time this year at the three-week-long 52nd annual meeting of the United Nations' Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights ("Sub-Commission"). Acting pursuant to the UN Roster status of NOCIRC, and with assistance from team members Tina Kimmel and Ken Drabik who each worked with me on site for part of the session, I traveled to Geneva to work with the Sub-Commission.